The Age of Miracles Has Not Passed

Russell Brand on Amy Winehouse:

Now Amy Winehouse is dead, like many others whose unnecessary deaths have been retrospectively romanticised, at 27 years old. Whether this tragedy was preventable or not is now irrelevant. It is not preventable today. We have lost a beautiful and talented woman to this disease. Not all addicts have Amy’s incredible talent. Or Kurt’s or Jimi’s or Janis’s, some people just get the affliction. All we can do is adapt the way we view this condition, not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill.

THANK YOU.

This has become a Thing of mine, the way our press likes to justify artists' afflictions by pretending that addiction or mental illness is a condition necessary to great creation. Ernest Hemingway didn't write, or even write well, because he was depressed and/or drunk. Sylvia Plath did not create beautiful poetry because she was depressed. Janis Joplin did not make searing music because she did drugs. That depressives and addicts create does not mean their conditions are responsible for their creations.

It's a pernicious myth, because it enables people to deny themselves treatment and others to deny they even need treatment on the basis that because their talent is tied inextricably to some kind of difficulty. When people grant responsibility for your success to your disease, they make it impossible for you to think of becoming cured or even treated without the overwhelming fear of losing that success.

Some of that comes from the old ways of treating mental illnesses, with drugs that took far more than the most destructive urges away. But some of that comes from the movie and TV show ideal that justifies being very sick as integral to being extraordinary, or that takes people's own justifications — and you can say whatever you like to get yourself through the day, don't make it true — at face value and accords the most ridiculous assertions respect you'd never give the homeless guy on the corner.

And here's the thing: When it's a celebrity, it's easy to romanticize and justify. After all, you only see the blistering glory, and the terrible fall. You don't see the day-to-day, grinding, brutal struggle to work in spite of, not inspired by, a debilitating illness or addiction. When it's you, your brother, your mother, your child, your friend? You have a front row seat. And it starts to seem a lot less romantic and tragically beautiful and a lot more fucking stupid and infuriating and impossible.

Put this another way: Do I write because I'm depressed? For fuck's sake, the thing that finally drove me to get treatment for my depression was the fact that I couldn't work anymore. I couldn't conceive of the process of buttoning my shirt in the morning, sure, but when I couldn't write, that was when things got serious! You know about my depression because I write it, but I also write about everything. That's how I make sense of the world. It's no more necessary to my work that I be miserable than that I be happy. It is very necessary that I be sane. As I've said before, if you don't know the difference I sincerely hope you never have to find out.

I liked Amy's music. It sucks that she couldn't find a way out of her own personal darkness. And that's all this is really about.

A.

Comments

[David Terrenoire]

I heard Marc Maron and Richard Lewis on Maron's podcast, WTF. They talked about comics who are afraid to feel good, to feel healthy, because it would take away whatever it is that makes them funny.

I'm a writer, too, and I'm a drunk. Every day I struggle with alcohol and so much of my own sense of myself as a writer is so tied to my epic abilities to drink that I have to tell myself, over and over, that the two are separate and one does not require the other. Some days I win. Some days I don't.

Years ago, I heard this excellent answer to the question of why writers, artists and musicians have such a high propensity for substance abuse: They don't have to get up in the morning.

But now that I am up, I guess I should get to work.

As always, A, I enjoy your posts and this one in particular struck a chord.

[Maitri]

In one of my recent posts, I ask if addiction is or can become a part of personality. The same can be asked of depression. Sure, you can come with addiction and depression as part of your brain chemistry, but how do they affect personality? In the same post, I quote Salman Rushdie when he said that he treats his writing like a job to be done and not a function of artistic temperament. And now you say your depression kept you from working. In other words, each person's mileage varies, but it makes me wonder about people who lost or found themselves after they got treatment for depression, anxiety, substance abuse, etc. Who were they all along?

[LC]

Thank you, the whole "if you aren't tortured you aren't an artist" thing drives me up the wall.

[virgotex]

people who lost or found themselves after they got treatment for depression, anxiety, substance abuse, etc. Who were they all along?

Or lost or found other people.

Read the Brand piece yesterday. Glad to see it's getting so much mileage.

[pansypoo]

i guess my problem is i don't drink much and no drugs. obviously no angst is hurting my art.
fuck.

[cwaltz]

I lost a father and a sibling to addiction so I definitely appreciate this sentiment. It should have been said long ago that society does not benefit from the torture that these souls go through. If anything struggling with disease and addiction is a hurdle to being a happy, successful person. I'm sorry that so many never make it over the hurdle. It's a sad sad waste.

[nellie]

Thank you. Simply, thank you.

[Maitri]

We're not the only ones thinking about this. So is Scientific American.

1) "the link is not between creativity and addiction per se. There is a link between addiction and things which are a prerequisite for creativity"

2) "You don't become addicted because you feel pleasure strongly. On the contrary, addicts seem to want it more but like it less."

3) "Does curing the addiction eliminate the creativity? Usually not. When you cure the addiction, you're not changing your genes."

[dan mcenroe]

I can't remember who said this in the wake of Cobain's death, but it stuck with me: "We mourn the loss of a genius like Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin, but then we look at a guy like Keith Richards and say, 'man, that guy can PARTY!' We can't have it both ways, people."

[Maria Elena Lopez]

A, thank you.

[pansypoo]

but if you are black. you get prison.